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It is, as Tim Schafer calls it, a night of 1,000 hugs. Double Fine studios is hosting a big party it calls "The Day of The Devs" in San Francisco, where fans will get the chance to play "Broken Age" for the first time, as well as a new, unannounced title. The event is meant to celebrate indie developers in all shapes and sizes. Small team development has grown immeasurably over the past few years, going from a relative oddity to a genuine driving force in the modern videogame industry, both artistically and financially. For Double Fine's Greg Rice, this revolution is only bound to keep rolling:

"The typically smaller budgets and team sizes in the indie space tend to result in games that take more creative risks. It's only pushing ourselves to these new and unexplored places that our industry can grow into it's full potential," he told Forbes.

"It's been really exciting to watch the indie scene blossom from a handful of scrappy developers into the unstoppable indie revolution happening in games these days. There's a full on tidal wave of artistic, creative, and innovative titles being announced or released seemingly every day now. Between the appearance of better and cheaper development tools and the rise of many great open digital distribution platforms, it's easier now more than ever for small teams to develop and release a game on their own and see success."

The party will also feature games and "other wares" from a range of bigger names in the indie scene, as well as Phil Fish in a new, hopefully more psychologically manageable role as a DJ.

Double Fine's Broken Age, as it stands now, is both an encouraging and cautionary tale about the way Kickstarter has evolved as a powerful tool in indie games financing. After asking for $400,000 and raising $3.3 million, Double Fine dramatically increased the scope of its game -- so much so that the new game proved too expensive, and the company had to reshuffle its schedule in order to make it financially feasible. The game still looks great, however, and I love the idea of announcing a new game by letting fans play it rather than blasting a trailer out over YouTube.